“Sweet Mother of the Abyss,” said Phosis T’kar at the sight of them.
Ahriman felt the calm he had established within him crumble when confronted by such powerful icons of war. Like gods of battle, the towering creations rendered everything in the valley inconsequential. He saw the same grace and aesthetic in these guardians as he had seen in the valley’s formation. Whoever had willed this mountain into existence had also crafted these guardians to watch over it.
“What are they?” asked Hathor Maat.
“I don’t know,” said Ahriman.
“Xenos Titans?”
“They have the look of eldar about them,” said Phosis T’kar.
Ahriman agreed. Two decades ago, the Thousand Sons had detected a fleet of eldar vessels on the edge of the Perdus Anomaly. The encounter had been cordial, both forces passing on their way without violence, but Ahriman had never forgotten the elegance of the eldar ships and the ease with which they navigated the stars.
“They must be war engines,” said Hathor Maat. “Khalophis would kill to see this.”
That was certainly true. Khalophis was Pyrae, and a warmongering student of conflict in all its most brutal forms. If an enemy was to be wiped from the battlefield with overwhelming firepower, it was to Khalophis the Thousand Sons turned.
“I’m sure he would,” said Ahriman, dragging his eyes from the titanic war machines. The valley was filled with Aghoru tribesmen, all bearing burning brands or battering their palms bloody on tribal drums.
Phosis T’kar held his bolt pistol at his side, but Ahriman could see his urge to use it was strong. Hathor Maat held his heqa staff at the ready. Warriors who had faced the Dominus Liminus and achieved the rank of adept could release devastating bursts of aetheric energy through their staffs, but here it was no more than a symbol of rank.
“Hold to the Enumerations,” he whispered. “There is to be no killing unless I give the word.”
Perhaps a thousand men and women in hooded robes and reflective masks filled the valley, surrounding a great altar of basalt that stood before a yawning cave mouth set in the cliff between the towering guardians.
Ahriman immediately saw that this cave was no deliberately crafted entrance to the mountain. An earthquake had ripped it open and the blackness of it seemed darker than the depths of space.
“What’s going on here?” demanded Phosis T’kar.
“I do not know,” said Ahriman, advancing cautiously through the Aghoru, seeing the crimson plates of the Sekhmet’s armour reflected in their masks. The chanting ceased and the drumming diminished until the valley was utterly silent.
“Why are they watching?” hissed Hathor Maat. “Why don’t they move?”
“They’re waiting to see what we do,” replied Ahriman.
It was impossible to read the Aghoru behind their masks, but he didn’t think there was any hostile intent. The mirror-masked tribesmen simply watched as Ahriman led the Sekhmet through the crowds towards the basalt altar. Its smooth black surface gleamed in the last of the day’s light, like the still waters of a motionless black pool.
Tokens lay strewn across the altar’s surface, bracelets, earrings, dolls of woven reeds and bead necklaces; the personal effects of scores of people. Ahriman saw footprints in the dust leading from the altar to the black tear in the mountainside. Whoever had made them had gone back and forth many times.
He knelt beside the tracks as Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat approached the altar.
“What are these?” wondered Phosis T’kar.
“Offerings?” ventured Hathor Maat, lifting a neck torque of copper and onyx, and examining the workmanship with disdain.
“To what?” asked Phosis T’kar “I didn’t read of any practices of the Aghoru like this.”
“Nor I, but how else do you explain it?”
“Yatiri told us the Mountain is a place of the dead,” said Ahriman, tracing the outline of a print clearly made by someone of far greater stature than any mortal or Astartes.
“Perhaps this is a rite of memorial,” said Phosis T’kar.
“You could be right,” conceded Hathor Maat, “but then where are the dead?”
“They’re in the Mountain,” said Ahriman, backing away from the cave as the drums began once again. He rejoined his warriors, planting his staff in the dusty ground.
As one, the Aghoru turned their mirrored masks towards the end of the valley, chanting in unison and moving forwards with short, shuffling steps, the butts of their falarica thumping on the ground in time with every beat of the drums.
“Mandala,” ordered Ahriman, and the Sekhmet formed a circle around the altar. Auto-loaders clattered and power fists crackled as energy fields engaged.
“Permission to open fire?” requested Hathor Maat, aiming his bolt pistol at the mask of the nearest Aghoru tribesman.
“No,” said Ahriman, turning to face the darkness of the cave mouth as wind-blown ash gusted from the depths of the mountain. “This isn’t for us.”
Bleak despair tainted the wind, the dust and memory of a billion corpses decayed to powder and forgotten in the lightless depths of the world.
A shape emerged from the cave, wreathed in swirling ash: hulking, crimson and gold and monstrous.
CHAPTER THREE
Magnus/The Sanctum/You Must Teach Him
HE COULDN’T FOCUS on it. Impressions were all Lemuel could make out: skin that shone as though fire flowed in its veins, mighty wings of feathers and golden plates. A mane of copper hair, ash-stained and wild, billowed around the being’s head, its face appearing as an inconstant swirl of liquid light and flesh, as though no bone formed the basis for its foundations, but something altogether more dynamic and vital.
Lemuel felt sick to his stomach at the sight, yet was unable to tear his gaze from this towering being.
Wait… Wasit towering?
With each second, it seemed as though the apparition’s shape changed without him even being aware of it. Without seeming to vary from one second to the next, the being was alternately a giant, a man, a god, or a being of radiant light and a million eyes.
“What is it?” asked Lemuel, the words little more than a whisper. “What have they done?”
He couldn’t look away, knowing on some primal level that the fire that burned in this being’s heart was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous thing in the world. Lemuel wanted to touch it, though he knew he would be burned to ashes were he to get too close.
Kallista screamed, and the spell was broken.
Lemuel dropped to his knees and vomited, the contents of his stomach spilling down the rockface. His heaving breath flowed like milky smoke from his mouth, and he stared in amazement at his stomach’s contents, the spattered mass glittering as though the potential of what it had once been longed to reconstitute itself. The air seethed with ambition, as though a power that not even the deadstones could contain flexed its muscles.
The moment passed and Lemuel’s vomit was just vomit, his breath invisible and without form. He could not take his eyes from the inchoate being below, his previously overwhelmed senses now firmly rooted in the mundane reality of the world. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wiped his face with his sleeve.
Kallista sobbed uncontrollably, shaking as though in the midst of a seizure. Her hands clawed the ground, scratching her nails bloody as though she were desperately writing something in the dust.
“Must come out,” she wept. “Can’t stay inside. Fire must come out or it’ll burn me up.”
She looked up at Lemuel, silently imploring him to help. Before he could move, her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slumped forward. Lemuel wanted to go to her aid, but his limbs were useless. Beside Kallista, Camille remained upright, her face blanched beneath her tan. Her entire body shook, and her jaw hung open in awed wonder.